Tag: Ric Flair

Decided to watch another one of the Observer’s Worst Match of the Year winners and so I’m checking out WCW Uncensored ’96 tonight. Maybe it’ll be one of those shows where the main event sucks ass but the undercard is pretty boss, which was often the case with Hogan Era WCW. Let’s find out!

Time for some more WCW Monday Nitro from 1995! Coming to you live 23 years ago in Johnson City, Tennessee. Our hosts for the evening are Eric Bischoff, Bobby “The Brain” Heenan, Steve “Mongo” McMichael, and Mongo’s dog, Pepe who is dressed in a little cowboy hat for reasons beyond my comprehension.

I’ve been watching a lot of random wrestling shit on YouTube as of late and watched a random episode of WCW Main Event from 1991 the other day for no good reason. Here’s a review of that episode, because this is what I do with my free time.

The Network is missing a week of WCCW which means Marc Lowrance’s promise from two weeks back is happening today! THE CHAMP IS HERE! No, not that Champ, the NWA World Heavyweight Champion circa March 1982, “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair! Let’s see what Flair’s up to at the Sportatorium as we check in with another installment of World Class Championship Wrestling from 1982.

From time to time I’ve got 40 minutes to kill and a desire to see mid-90s WCW wrestlers squash dudes in short, nothing matches. Today was one of those days so I checked out an episode of WCW Pro from 1996. Our hosts for this morning are Chris Cruise, Dusty Rhodes and “The Living Legend” Larry Zbyszko. Let’s get down to the ring for action!

Back before the WWE Network, 18 “Monthly Specials” and 900 hours of broadcast television a week there was scant little wrestling to watch. Sure there was stuff like Jim Crockett Promotions/NWA/WCW on the Superstation and the AWA on ESPN but that sort of stuff didn’t really appeal much to children. The WWF, however, had just the thing to meet the wrestling needs of small children across the United States: Coliseum Videos.
These tapes would have a few matches, often “Coliseum Video exclusives” filmed either at house shows or as dark matches during Wrestling Challenge tapings alongside goofy backstage stuff and profiles on various wrestlers. For those of us who became wrestling fans in the 80s or early 90s the Coliseum Videos became an integral part of our fandom, frequently being rented from the local video rental store and watched repeatedly. So when the WWE recently dumped a bunch of them up on the WWE Network, I for one was very excited.

While a lot of the matches on these tapes weren’t exactly five-star mat classics there are some hidden classics as well as matches that I, for whatever reason, thought were great when I was ten years old. Today we’re going to check on what is probably the pinnacle of the Coliseum Videos, 1993’s Smack ‘Em Whack ‘Em.

Welcome everyone to Monday Night Raw coming to you live from the Manhattan Center with your hosts Good Ol’ JR and Jerry “The King” Lawler. We’ve got the old wailing siren of yore and the entire thing is set up like an episode of Raw from 1993, complete with an ICOPRO banner.

Lawler promises that this will be the most memorable Raw ever. It would turn out that he was either gravely mistaken or outright lying…

The story goes that back in 1987 Vince McMahon put together the Survivor Series to fuck with Jim Crockett Promotion’s PPV buyrates for Starrcade. The event was scheduled on the same day as the previously announced Starrcade and Vince talked a number of cable providers to carry Survivor Series alone by threatening to withhold WrestleMania IV from them if they aired both events.

Crockett decides that turnabout is fair play and schedules an NWA supercard to run against WrestleMania IV and goes that extra mile by putting it on free TV instead of PPV. This is that supercard.

We’re live at the American Airlines Arena in Miami for WCW Uncensored, a show with a reputation of one of the worst WCW PPVs of all times. So why exactly am I reviewing a notoriously bad show from WCW’s nadir? BECAUSE DOUBLE STRAPIFICATION JACK!

We start things off with a video package highlighting the events leading up to the trio of main events to come. We get stuff about Luger and Sting feuding for the nine billionth time and Sid and Jarrett jostling for the World Heavyweight Championship, but none of that shit actually matters because Hogan vs. Flair is a MOTHERFUCKIN’ YAPAPI STRAP MATCH BROTHER DUDE JACK!

This seemingly random episode of Raw is actually a historically important one as it was the first WWE Draft and the episode that would begin the Brand Split Era. We start things off with a cold open that features Linda McMahon boringly explain the concept of the draft to those of us watching at home as well as a gaggle of WWE wrestlers watching in the locker room.

There will be twenty picks tonight overall between the two brands: Raw (with General Manager Ric Flair) and Smackdown (with General Manager Vince McMahon). The remaining superstars will be put in a draft lottery on WWF.com after Raw ends or something.

She goes on to say that since Triple H, Jericho, and Stephanie McMahon will be competing in a match for the Undisputed Heavyweight Championship none of them are able to be drafted. Steve Austin is also ineligible since he apparently had something written into his contract that said, “In the event of a Brand Split leading to a Draft I, Stone Cold Steve Austin, become a free agent and that’s the bottom line cuz Stone Cold said so.” I guess he was legit having a contract dispute at the time and it was unclear if he’d resign or not and this is what they came up with.